How Facebook Sells Your Personal Information

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Now that Facebook has gone public and is struggling to get a
steady valuation, the company is looking to find new ways to make
its money and prove its worth to investors.

One option Facebook is exploring is enhancing ad sales by more
effective targeting of increasingly specific demographic groups,
using
location data from mobile devices and information culled from
the site.

The company will be targeting members' information more closely,
and expects personal data-sharing to double every decade.

That forces Facebook members to consider just how much of their
personal information to share, both now and in the future.

How might Facebook's already flexible privacy policy change as
the company works harder to become a platform for engaging with
brands? How will that affect the end user?

Marketing treasure trove

We have to start by taking a look at the data in question. How
much of a danger to the consumer is the data that Facebook has?
Exactly how much data does it really have?

Peter Pasi, executive vice president at Emotive LLC, an
Arlington, Va.-based firm that focuses on digital outreach for
political campaigns, says Facebook has quite a bit.

"Facebook is the largest opt-in community of individuals in the
world, and boasts unparalleled reach," Pasi said. "In English,
that means it's likely the
largest database of people ever built, and contains more
personal data than any other source."

We know that Facebook has a lot of information about us, both
what we enter ourselves and the data that our friends choose to
put up about us.

"Online marketers look at signals," Pasi said. "Did someone visit
a snowboarding vacation site, or put a new snowboarding jacket in
their online shopping cart and not buy it? Have they been
searching for snowboarding equipment? These are the types of
things that signal a marketer that a consumer is interested in,
or intent on, making a purchase."

You can see how quickly information that seems innocuous when you
post it on Facebook can make you a target for specific marketing
goals.

Location tagging is, in and of itself, another way to make you an
attractive target to marketers. You're giving away information
about which brick-and-mortar retailers you are likely to
frequent, allowing for even more enhanced targeting.

The issues are really being formed right now, said Allison Hobbs,
an intellectual-property and copyright lawyer in New York.

"Social media companies should not engage in deceptive or unfair
trade practices," Hobbs said. "As far as end-user data is
concerned, that means social media companies should honestly
disclose what they plan to do with it. Usually, they do this
through their Terms of Service or privacy statements.

"When they are not honest, the Federal Trade Commission, which
regulates deceptive and unfair trade practices, may issue a
complaint against them," Hobbs said. "In 2011, the FTC issued
complaints against Google and Facebook; the result was that both
parties are required to do privacy audits until 2032.

"So, it looks like the issue is being handled on a case-by-case
basis, which may result in better rules than legislation or
prophylactic regulation, since it is more likely to keep up with
technological change."

Gaining perspective

What can you do to help keep your personal data from becoming a
marketing director's dream?